Southern Utah University athletes should love playing in big cities after spending most of their time in cozy Cedar City, and the Mid-Continent Conference's city slickers ought to enjoy the laid-back, college rah-rah atmosphere of Utah's Color Country.
It's almost "Green Acres" all over again.The differences in locale - and the many similarities in university academic and athletic goals - are the things that quickly brought about this unlikely marriage of Southern Utah's Thunderbirds and a league based in Illinois with a third of its members in the Eastern time zone.
SUU and the Mid-Con held a news conference in Salt Lake City Wednesday to announce that the T-Birds will become league members as of July 1, 1997, and begin play in 10 men's and women's sports in fall of 1997.
The sports include men's and women's basketball, cross country, indoor/outdoor track, men's golf and women's tennis. SUU's football, gymnastics, baseball and softball teams will remain independent or find other affiliations.
It was a courtship of less than three months, though MCC commissioner Dr. Jon Steinbrecher says he thought of it even before SUU came available with the May demise of the American West Conference. Steinbrecher said he contacted SUU, and it had anticipated his call. His first campus visit was June 18.
Losing the American West, "as it turns out, was one of the best things to happen to Southern Utah," said president Dr. Gerald R. Sherratt. "We hadn't been thinking big enough."
The new affiliation gives SUU a shot at the Mid-Con's automatic NCAA tournament berths in men's and women's basketball, something it didn't have in the AWC, and the possibility of television exposure since the league has contracts with Prime Sports and ESPN. It also gives SUU the league security it didn't have in past affiliations. "The opportunity to play for an automatic berth will really help our basketball program," said coach Bill Evans.
"We can be competitive right off the bat," says athletic director Jack Bishop, "and we don't have to add or drop any sports. That might have been required by joining another conference and isn't something we were prepared to do."
The T-Birds and league insist there's no travel-cost or travel-time issues, despite the three-time-zone span of the conference, which sees SUU as a foot in the door toward eventually building a Western division.
Since they'll fly from Las Vegas to airports in Chicago, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Pittsburgh or New York, the Thunderbirds say costs are less than flying to smaller, closer cities like Missoula, Mont. "We can cut travel expenses 25 percent," says Sherratt, whose university board unanimously approved the move Tuesday.
As an independent this year, SUU will travel and spend more than in a Mid-Con schedule, said Bishop and Evans. SUU's had trouble getting home games for both men's (11) and women's (5) teams for '96-97 and must travel to fill out its schedule. Evans said athletes won't miss any more classes due to travel than they would had the Big Sky accepted them. The Big Sky plays Thursday/Saturday games (leaving Wednesday, returning Sunday), the Mid-Con plays Saturday/Monday (leaving Friday, returning Tuesday).
The Mid-Con also gave unanimous approval (Monday), said Steinbrecher, noting that once he explained the whole idea, doubting members decided it made sense for them. Steinbrecher said the deal was wrapped up rapidly because SUU's "application materials were just phenomenal."